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Newt: Bain looted companies

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

01/08/2012 05:22 PM EST

Newt Gingrich tripled down on his hits on Mitt Romney over Bain Capital in a press conference after the Sunday morning debate, via Jeff Zeleny:

Newt Gingrich assailed Mitt Romney’s business background of buying and selling companies at the investment firm Bain Capital, saying Sunday afternoon that the work was comparable to “rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company.”

Mr. Gingrich, who has spent weeks complaining about a barrage of attacks aimed at him, called the accusations against Mr. Romney a “legitimate part of politics,” so long as they were accurate. He said he did not take issue with a “super PAC” supporting his candidacy that unearthed a film documenting one of the failing companies that cast Mr. Romney in a poor light.

“To quote the governor, you have to have broad shoulders and you have to be able to take the heat to be in the kitchen,” Mr. Gingrich said with a smile, speaking to reporters at a news conference here. “Those were his direct words.”

Gingrich seemed reluctant to fully embrace the Bain critique after he got pushback the first time he did it from conservative elites. But now he is going for it, and for Romney, it's a potentially dangerous line of attack.